The Clockmaker

 Oh, damn you, Livejournal DDoS. I am an addict. I feel hideously, hideously cut-off from the entire world.

I am cranky today. It was warm in the office, so we put the AC on, which we don't do often. It didn't really feel cold enough but it made it at least bearable. Until my new helper (who I've very suddenly gone off) came out of a meeting, back into the office and announced that she was freezing. Half the office are saying they're hot, half are freezing. Usually people fall into one camp or the other - my two French colleagues are always cold and Housewife Colleague and Boss's Feisty Mother are always hot but I tend to jump from one to the other and today I was hot. 
And my helper - who comes in every day in a skirt and some precious shoes (she's such a girl! It's shoes shoes shoes) and of course, she's got bare legs and she whines about being cold. And she says "I know the rest of  you like a quiet life but I'm not going to wear ten pairs of trousers just so as not to freeze, I'm going to say something." One pair of trousers would do, love. It's not too much to ask that you cover your legs up if you're going to whine about the cold so the rest of us don't get heatstroke.
I am always cranky in the heat. I hate the heat. And I work in an office with a tin roof so it gets unreasonably hot in the summer and I like the AC as long as it's not too cold (and we used to have it set at 18C, from 10am to the end of the day which was arctic). 

I was also cranky today because I went snowboarding. And it was hot as I hiked up the hill a dozen times and slid down. And the slope was sticky. When I say "sticky", I mean the damn thing just put the brakes on. I could just about move by method of shuffling vigorously but it was very easy to stay put at a ridiculous angle. So I pleaded for some spray and that made it go like a rocket - for the top two-thirds. At the bottom third, brakes go on again. So, so frustrating.

And the nice lady from the abseil who was going to email the photos she took of me has not and that is frustrating. I check my emails twenty times a day being hopeful but nothing.

*wants livejournal back* *cries*

Eeesh, missing an entire night's sleep really takes it out of you! I deliberately (and stupidly) didn't bother even trying to sleep Friday night and it's now Monday and I could still curl up and go to sleep right now.

My immune system is still playing am-I-amn't-I with me. I've been fine for several days now but it had me all full of cough this morning and feeling really unnaturally hot for a bit. That's gone again now. It teases me.

I bought some new glasses when I was going through a phase back in the autumn. That was when I discovered the concept of coloured overlays and lenses. I used the overlays for a while but I've stopped now and I don't think I'm any worse without them. But I had vague intentions of getting coloured lenses, so I bought some cheap glasses from the internet. And it would be foolish to spend that amount of money on getting them coloured, especially when I don't think I need them now, so they've gone into circulation as normal glasses. I didn't bother with the anti-reflection coating, all it seems to do is attract fingerprints but... actually, I've had it for so long that I'm struggling with these ones because they do reflect things. And they're not fitted to my face. I have quite a small head and glasses tend to be too big. That's why black-framed ones, even relatively delicate ones, always look ludicrous on me. And it's why they all have to have their arms bent in peculiar ways, to try and keep them on my ears. They've been slipping off all weekend and it's driving me crazy.

I have taken advice and am watching Boardwalk Empire. Can't put my finger on why but I'm quite enjoying it. Only two episodes in but I've got four sitting waiting to be watched later. Generally, if I'm not in a series at the beginning I don't bother, it's too much effort and commitment and just takes too much time to catch up (see my unwatched Battlestar Galactica boxset) but this is only twelve episodes. I'm still very much having trouble keeping who's who straight - I mix up Nucky and Jimmy occasionally at the moment and there's still a lot of people I haven't learnt to recognise yet. Hopefully I'll get there.

As well as that, I've finally picked up a book that I'm really enjoying - oh, I can see its faults, both in story and in style, but it's fun and that's all that's important, frankly. Black Lung Captain by Chris Wooding. I'm not going to pretend that it's fine literature. But stories are stories.

Speaking of which, I've spent the last ten days feeling vaguely that April would be a great time to knuckle down on the books I'm trying to write. The Sequel just isn't as much fun as the original Big Book Project. I don't know if that's because I've got something of a plot laid out, whereas the original was total "throw everything I can dream of in there and we'll sort it out later!". I don't know if it's because I'm trying to shoehorn in a couple of new characters who just aren't gelling or if it's suffering from lack of Nat but it's a pig to write. I love Alex and Joey. I love this brotherly/motherly relationship they seem to have slipped into. They're poppets. I guess the real problem is that Joey is coming across as a nerd who'd rather be on his computer and neither of them seems particularly good at the secret agent bit. Arrggh. Boys!